Overview
- Astronomers using South Africa’s MeerKAT with Breakthrough Listen instrumentation detected natural hydroxyl emission but no artificial transmissions stronger than roughly 0.17 watts.
- Oleg Smirnov of Rhodes University said the result further weakens hypotheses suggesting the object has an engineered origin.
- 3I/ATLAS was discovered on July 1 by NASA’s ATLAS survey and is the third confirmed interstellar visitor after ’Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov.
- Harvard’s Avi Loeb highlighted hydrogen cyanide in the comet’s coma and raised a theoretical toxicity concern he described as extremely unlikely to affect Earth.
- Reports earlier this year of self-luminosity and color changes fueled debate over its nature, yet current observations most strongly support a natural comet with unusual properties.